Little Secrets (Part 1)

Kanes and their secrets, peas in their pods. From her grave, Farah Kane would have been amused how the legacy of her great-grandfather seemed to carry on, as if he'd laid a curse upon his children to never have freedom from the skeletons in their closets. Would she be amused, though, at what her granddaughter had become because of a skeleton so hidden she didn't even know of it herself?

No, perhaps she wouldn't... But if Farah still breathed, she wouldn't be silent. "You reap what you sow," she would have said in her matter-of-fact voice. "And if you sow secrets, you'll never grow peace."

This night was certainly anything but peaceful.

In the darkness of the sunless road, the lights from the science facility stood out like a beacon. The street got little traffic, but many who drove by recognizing that they shouldn't be on tried to puzzle why the building was open so late. It was strange in Twinbrook, a place where no one ever stayed at work after hours--even if they had to. Something important definitely had to be happening.

Luckily, no one in Twinbrook had a good enough imagination to figure out quite what was going on.

Amelia had never been so hungry in her life. She could even feel the drool slipping down the corners of her lips, which she impulsively wiped away as her eyes turned to follow Bradley running away from her with all his dear life.

"What's wrong, brother?" she spoke in a voice that wasn't her own; it almost had a purr to it, like a rumbling tiger ready to stalk its prey. "I just need a snack..."

Bradley ran and he ran, but everywhere he went Amelia was only steps behind him; he'd never seen such speed before. If he wasn't fearing for his life, he might have actually been impressed at what her transformation had allowed her to do... But at the moment, he was... slightly distracted.

Unfortunately, there was no where to go; he'd locked the door to the stairs when they'd arrived, and couldn't get through them now without pausing long enough for her to catch up to him. Everywhere else? A dead end. He was cornered, with no options.

... Almost no options. Kanes may have their secrets, but they also have luck--and whether it be that or fate, something seemed to weigh heavier in his pocket as he watched his sister's glistening teeth growing closer and closer to his neck.

He tugged it out: Lil's remote. Brad had had it since he'd repaired her at the station, but it'd been nothing but a useless set of buttons until this moment.

Knowing it was the best he had, he said a prayer to the Maker above and pressed a red one near the top.

Several miles away, Officer Walker stood up from his desk when he noticed a suspicious amount of movement from within Lilobot's cell. "She better not be trying to eat the bars, again," he muttered to himself as he tentatively approached. Her back was turned to him when he stopped, which irritated him further. "Something wrong?" he asked.

Her head swiveled around. "I am afraid so, sir. And I must apologize, but I have to leave."

"... Leave?" He tried not to laugh.

"Yes, sir. I have greatly enjoyed my stay here, but there is something much more important that I must tend to." When she saw the very displeased look he was giving her, Lil continued,  "You are welcome to join me--in fact, if you would meet me at the Science and Research Center in due haste, you would have my gratitude. Now if you could please back away from the cell bars, sir--I would be quite upset if I happened to injure you."

"What the heck are you ta--" Officer Walker didn't get the opportunity to finish his statement. Before he could even reach his hand out to unlock the cell door, a blinding light erupted from the opposite side of the cell, sending such a violent explosion of heat and wind that he felt himself stumbling backwards, his hands shielding his face. "What the--?!"

"WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! KA BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMM!!" Lilobot's mechanical voice was lost within the sounds of stone crumbling and exploding out from her cell's back wall, but it didn't stop her from giddily dancing in delight at the amazing surge of what--to her--was like adrenaline pumping through her oil-driven veins.

"It's amaaaaaaaaaazing!"

"Wait--wait, stop!" Officer Walker choked on the smoke as he lifted a hand out towards her, trying to stop her; but the bars to her cell were too hot to the touch for him to come in and tackle her. "You can't do this!"

"I'm sorry, sir, but where Lilobot is needed, Lilobot goes!" With Walker doing nothing but blubbering nonsense at her response, she began to jog through the rubble she'd created, giddily saying, "Don't worry, sir, I'll be right back!"

The police station stirred to life as Lilobot escaped, sirens blaring and alarm bells waking citizens up for miles around; Lil didn't have time right now to worry about that, though. Her legs carrying her away faster than any human could possibly match, Lil bounced into the sky and, with what could only be described as a smile on her face, flew off into the night.

Back at the science facility, Brad was having no such luck escaping. He'd managed to continue to keep a few steps ahead of Amelia's chase, but it was obvious she was doing it on purpose. Every lap around the hallway was one more lap until he was too tired to run, and another lap she got to watch him skitter away like a mouse whose tail was trapped safely in the cat's paw.

Brad's exhaustion and clumsiness finally got the better of him. He stumbled to the floor, hopeless. With  no help in sight, all he could do was plead. "Please, Mia... You don't know what you're doing. Wake up... I know you're in there!"

"You always were so horrible at being funny," Amelia giggled as she slowly stepped closer and closer.

"Step away from my father."

Amelia swung around quickly, teeth bared. "Well well well," she hissed. "Looks like your friend's come out to play!"

"Lil... Please..." Bradley groaned as he collapsed feebily against the wall. "Try not to hurt her."

"I will try," she spoke in a low hum, very much unlike her normal bubbly synthesized voice. "But I make no promises."

All it took was for Lil to take one step, her eyebrows furrowed in anger, for Amelia's face of hunger to fade into one of fear.

Amelia fled, but the speed of a vampire was no match for Lilobot's mechanical strength; she got only a few steps before Lil had already gained the distance and reached out to grab her.

No one hurt her family.

"Put your hands up! Both of you!"

Behind them, Lilobot's entourage had finally caught up; they'd taken their willy nilly time, but they had had to decide whether Lil actually went to the Science Facility like she said; they were lucky, then, that the security guard there had finally figured out something was awry and had given them the call.

Guns out and all business, the cops waited for the two to comply with their command, even repeating it when neither one seemed to have heard it.

"Sorry, officers, I was just finishing up some important business," Lil said calmly, her voice now back to normal. "I had to make sure my Dad was alright--I'll come back, now."

"Miss, up off the ground! Now!"

Her body aching all over--and weakening as her thirst continued unsated--Amelia slowly began to rise from the floor, clearly none-too-happy about her current predicament. Things just couldn't be going any worse, right now.

"Hah," she smirked, wiping the dust off her thoroughly-kicked bum. "And all I wanted was a bite to eat."

---

"She should be calm, now that she's... eaten," Bradley said slowly to the officer next to him. They stood inside a small room, staring through a thick piece of one-way glass at his sister, who knew she was being watched well enough to not want to look up. Now that her 'hunger' had faded, all that was left was shame.

"Why do you think she waited until now to confess? I mean... you know her better than any of us."

"Honestly?" Brad said, pulling himself away from the window; it was too painful to look at her. "I don't think she remembered until now. The virus... it causes some incredible regeneration properties. I don't think she could forget anything now if she tried."

Bradley had no idea how right he was. Amelia was doing everything she could to forget, but each sip she took of plasma just made everything more and more clear. The memories she had didn't feel like hers, but they were. It was the most terrifying thing she'd ever felt... Yes, even more terrifying than looking up into the eyes of a man about to kill her.

There was no where to hide from the truth.

"Are you ready to continue, Miss Kane?"

She nodded, ready as she'd ever be. "Where do you want me to start?"

"Let's start from the beginning--there's a few things I want you to clarify."

Amelia swallowed, hard. This felt like a time to take a deep breath, to take the plunge with as much courage as she could muster, but every breath she took felt useless. "Like?" she asked in a sheepish voice, exhaling slowly.

"You went to the Bottega the night of Shark's death... You said you were looking for blood there--now, why exactly would you do that, Miss Kane? An art studio is hardly a blood bank."

Breathe in. Breathe out--so unnecessary, but she needed it to feel alive. "It's complicated."

"We have time for complicated. Elaborate."

"Well, see... My dad. He--he--" She looked up at the cop, fear coating her eyes. How could she do this to her father? Amelia knew he had connections, but would they go far enough to protect him? "He had a shipment there. Stuff he stole from the black market trade with the vampires in Bridgeport. He told me... a while ago... that he stole it from them, to try to keep their population down. So I knew, he had to be keeping it somewhere--"

"And... why the Bottega?"

"When I first moved home, my Mom said that she was doing some sort of favor for my Dad, to repay him for buying her the studio... I just sort of put two and two together. Well. I didn't. ... She did."

"'She?'"

"Yeah... The... Me that's not me. It was... it was like a dream. I keep thinking on these memories and they're real, but they don't feel like mine. I mean, until a couple hours ago I didn't even know what was in those crates--or, er, didn't remember. I guess there was something inside me, trying to get out..."

"Well--this isn't particularly relevant at the moment, Amelia. Can you explain, what happened to Shark?"

"I killed him. I mean... obviously I killed him, but--" Amelia felt herself shaking; how could she be saying this?! She wasn't a killer! "--well, see, someone interrupted me the first night I went looking for the stolen plasma. I remember being so hungry, that when I came back and discovered the shipment had been replaced by a decoy, I was angry--angrier than I've ever been. Shark popped outta no where, accusing me, and then... then..."

"You attacked him?"

"I didn't mean to! I mean... I did... But..."

Amelia stopped. It was useless; they didn't understand. Her hands had done the slaying, so how could it not have been 'her' that had murdered him? Maybe having fangs had lent her a small ounce of courage, but the sickening feeling in her gut that no one seemed to believe her made her emotions run even colder. She wasn't even sure she cared, anymore--especially if she really was behind all of this.

"He was in the way. He scared me, I was hungry... But when I threw the lid at his face and watched him fall to the ground--I couldn't do it. I was so hungry... But I couldn't use him, after ending him like that. Some part of me stopped myself."

"Mhm... What about Harris de Wynter, then?"

"The night of my concert, after the hospital released me, I was weakened... I guess at this point I really needed to... drink... some... stuff." Flinch. "I remember feeling... really desperate. Desperate enough to trust de Wynter, that he'd actually help me."

"But he didn't, so you attacked him, didn't you?"

"No, no, not at all! I mean... Sort of, but not the way you think I did! When he saw me, he freaked--he was going to call the police, started running around his office like a lunatic, and all I was asking was for him to steal some plasma for me so I wouldn't starve! But he was so afraid of me... so afraid..."

"Amelia--he couldn't fallen through that window without help."

"But I--I didn't push him! I swear!"

"So you're saying he broke the window and jumped of his own free will?"

"I don't... I don't know!" Amelia began to cry; as the memories continued to flood back, and the cops swarmed her like hawks in such a dark, ominous room--all her emotions seemed to endlessly blur together. "Maybe I pushed him... But I didn't push him hard! I was just trying to knock the phone out of his hands, so he wouldn't turn me in..."

"But..."

"But--I didn't know my own strength. I was just so angry and blind--even... Her, the me that... you know, wasn't me? She was mortified--all she wanted was help, and yet, as he fell, it just all went away. Her last lifeline."

"You mean, your last lifeline."

"Yeah, whatever," Amelia groaned. "I remember watching him fall, though. Reaching after him like I could actually catch him, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't. He just kept falling... falling... Took forever. Didn't even have to be slow motion. And then when he hit the pavement... Even she--me--wanted to die."

"And so you just left?"

"I... I... I sat there for almost an hour, just staring at his body... But I had to go home. I was so tired... So scared... I don't even know how I got back to normal again, I was so hungry--but I woke up the next morning with nothing but a bad headache.. At least, until now."

As the last words left her lips, she felt her entire body become consumed by sobs; there was nothing she could say to prove her innocence, and she knew it.

No... She knew, she wasn't innocent. She was guilty. Even if it wasn't the actions of the Amelia Kane she had always been, it was still done by her hand. Done by a fragment of her that, as much as she hated to believe, WAS a part of her.

"I think we're done here," the cop behind her spoke in a low voice, his arms crossed. She couldn't see his face, but she could sense his expression--sense all of them. The disappointment, the hatred, the shame... it overwhelmed her too much to resist.

Tonight, the truth could not set her free.

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The Wrong Woman

They found her sitting on a park bench, staring up at the sky. Her expression had been whimsical, something that didn't change even when the sirens approached and her eyes turned downwards to look upon the approaching officers, with their guns raised towards her as if she were holding a bomb instead of a small, whimpering child.

"This what you were looking for?" Carolina chuckled as she shifted Margo onto her hip so she could stand. "Relax, kids," she remarked on their sudden apprehension on her movement. "I'm not going to eat you."

Things seemed, for a moment, to suddenly fall into place. Margo was brought back into Alesha's arms, and the cuffs Jebidiah watched going onto Carolina's wrists felt very, very satisfying... but something just seemed wrong. There was something very fishy, about all of this; the only thing that would've made Carolina easier to catch was if she'd walked herself straight into the police department with a red target on her chest.

Her lack of struggle made it very clear to Jebidiah that there was something more nefarious at foot--but for the life of him, he couldn't figure out what.

"So this is your grand plan, Carolina?" Jeb spat as Officer Curious lead her towards him. "Escape from prison, break into people's houses, steal, kidnap, and murder a few innocent people, just to hand yourself back in? Not sure that's quite the revenge you had in mind."

"Oh no, my dear Mr. Kane, it certainly is not," Carolina responded with a smirk, her eyes barely visible to him under the rim of her hat. "In fact, I honestly haven't the faintest clue what you're talking about."

"Don't play games with me, Carolina."

"Oh but I'm not, Jeb, I'm not. In fact, I'm insulted. You, accusing me of murder? Why would I ever do such a thing as that?"

"Don't be coy. Shark Racket, Harris de Wynter? Think they just fell over on their own accord?"

"Dear me, of course not," Carolina purred, smiling. "I actually admit I wish I'd thought of it first, you do seem to have your panties in a right bunch over it--and it all turned out to be incredibly convenient, for me. But I'm sorry, love--you must be entirely blind, because besides your lovely granddaughter, I haven't touched a soul."

Jebidiah could feel the anger pulsing through his veins; his face was beginning to grow hot, something that was becoming increasingly harder to control. "And why, Carolina? Why kidnap her and leave both her, and yourself out in plain sight to see?"

"Come now Jeb, do you honestly think I want to deal with a brat like that for more than a couple of hours? Besides, I'm getting bored with this cat and mouse game we're playing. I did what I came to do, and now I'm ready to relax in a cozy little cell for the rest of my time while I watch the intricate little tapestry you've woven start to unravel."

"Which is supposed to mean what, exactly?" Jeb hissed back, his lips still curled angrily.

"I am going to watch, Mr. Kane, as with every step you take, you will lose everything that you hold dear. I will watch as one by one, you drive your children away, watch as you try to justify your actions but find nothing but the cold, hard truth you've hidden behind the lies. You took my children away from me, Jebidiah--and now I have done the same to you."

"I don't--"

"All I had to do was use their own faults to my advantage, my dear. Put the dominoes in a line and wait until the first piece falls--so I can watch as everything you love is stripped from you. That is all I wanted, Jebidiah--and that is what I will get."

---

"This... This place is amazing, Brad! I can't believe you never brought me over here, before!"

"Just please don't touch anything, alright? We're not supposed to have anyone that doesn't have clearance inside this level of the facility--I'd get in some serious trouble if you broke anything."

Amelia nodded silently, though she was still overcome with amazement at the gadgets and gizmos that littered the invention floor of Brad's workplace. She'd never really taken an interest in science before, but some of this stuff almost changed her mind; she wasn't sure what half the stuff was supposed to even do, but that was part of the fun!

"Are you coming? We don't have a lot of time--the security guard makes a pass of the facility every hour, and I'd really prefer to keep my job."

"Fine, fine--ooohh, wait, isn't that your Time Machine thingamadoobob?" Amelia lifted a finger to point into the corner of the large room.

"Yes--and as you can see, it's off-limits. Please, Amelia, you said that you were serious about this."

"Sooorrry sorry... I'm just--" She took a deep breath and turned her gaze away from Brad, ashamed. "I'm just kinda nervous, is all."

Truth be told, Amelia had a lot to be nervous about. Things for her had reached an all-time low; not only had she neglected those anti-depressant horsepills, and started seeing weird visions of glowy eye'd monsters, her last lifeline to sanity was dead; it was as if the world was trying to send her some sort of ironic signal that she was at the end of the road, too. She was desperate.

Desperate enough for this.

"Are you going sit down?" Bradley asked, impatient.

Amelia carefully set herself down on the seat; her nerves seemed to even cool, slightly, when she turned her eyes up towards the pulsing monitor on the light above her.

"So, explain to me what exactly this does, again?"

"It's a new type of a medical scanner we've been working on from a contract with a government. Basically, it sends out a specialized mixture of electromagnetic micro-pulses that allows us to see into the body on a much smaller scale--it's already been developed to work on less complex chemical compounds, but we've been working on this, which works... a bit like a very precise, high-powered MRI. But it tells us a lot more."

As the chair spun around, Amelia felt herself getting a little bit more anxious again. All this funny talk of 'electromagnetic micro-pulses' sounded a little frightening. "It's... It's safe, isn't it?"

"Not 100% safe, no--but it's not dangerous. It's about like having a series of X-Rays--carries a little bit of risk, but unless you're having one of these once a day, it's nothing to worry about. All our test subjects were unaffected." Bradley looked up from his screen at Amelia's quivering lip with a little bit of concern on his face. "You want to know what's wrong with you, don't you?"

"Yeah. I do." Deep breath. "Let's do this."

The large metal frame of the scanner erupted from the base and shielded her within moments; if Amelia weren't so paralyzed with surprise, she probably would've let out some pretty colorful phrases at how Bradley had neglected to warn her.

By the time she got the courage to even do that, the hum of the machine had gotten so loud that he wouldn'tve even been able to hear her if she said anything. 'I can't believe I'm doing this, I can't believe I'm doing this,' she thought to herself, her eyes still wide with fear.

It really didn't help, seeing how distracted Bradley was from her current condition. His eyes were glued to the screen, and his expression so intense that Amelia couldn't tell if he was just concentrating, or if he was confused.

"What do you see?!" Amelia tried to yell, but he obviously didn't hear her.

Instead, he continued to turn the dials frantically, moving the scan over various parts of her body. Unfortunately, everything that came up on the screen just...

"Isn't right," he muttered. "This doesn't make... sense."

The machine came to a halt loudly, the noise slowly puttering lower and lower as the metal casing surrounding Amelia's body slowly pulled away in order to let her free.

"That was... quick," she mumbled as she tuckled in her feet, preparing for the chair to swivel around. "But not quick enough," she added quietly as she began to feel her head spinning, the buzzing noise still making her own voice sound fuzzy to herself.

"Mhm."

Brad was still distracted. Amelia even had to wave her hand a little bit to catch his attention, for him to remember to flip the switch for her to be swung around again.

"Sorry," he mumbled, still not lifting his gaze from the monitor.

"Finally," Amelia murmured once she was let free; but as soon as she began to put some distance between herself at that strange, electromagnabbit machine-y thing, that light-headedness she'd attributed to the scanner's overwhelming noise caused a much unexpected weakness in her legs.

"Whoooooooooops!" she gasped, when her legs' weakness caused her to stumble right into her brother's arms. "That was weird!"

"You alright?"

"Yeah, yeah... I'm good--I think. Am now, at least," she lied.

"So... Did you see anything? A problem? Anything that you can use to help me?" she asked as she righted herself, trying not to show that anything was wrong. "You don't... you don't have to lie to me, Brad--I can handle the truth."

"It's not even that, Mia, it's that--" Brad paused, his face falling when he say the desperate, saddened look in her eyes. "I'm not a doctor. I can't tell you exactly what's wrong. But we've done scans on dozens and dozens of employees here--including myself--and... what I saw... It wasn't like any of us."

"What does that mean?" Amelia stuttered, her eyes widening.

"I don't know, Mia. But it can't mean anything good."

---

"Jeb, Jeb, I'm so glad you came this fast--Jeb... This isn't good. "

Jebidiah hadn't even made it out of the parking lot when Tana rushed out of the police station and up to him on the sidewalk, a look of sheer apprehension making her age lines look even deeper and more worrisome than usual. Just looking at her made him feel old--they really were getting on too far in years to deal with this sort of thing, anymore.

"Calm down, Tana--what's the problem?"
"You... might want to come inside and sit down, Jeb."
"I don't have time. Just spit it out, woman."
"Remember how you told me to check everything? Even the hairs?"

"Yes, of course I did," Jebidiah groaned, impatient. "What about it?"

"Well, we did some analysis on some hairs we found on glass from the window in Dr. de Wynter's window--and Jeb... they weren't Carolina's."

"Whoa, whoa, slow down. That's impossible. I know she won't confess, but it had to be her, Tana, she's--"

"Jeb, listen to me," Tana groaned, trying to get him to pay attention. "We triple checked the DNA on both hairs, and there wasn't even a shred of similarity... so..."

"So...?"

"Jeb... If I knew what I was going to find, I wouldn'tve done it. But I didn't think--I had absolutely no idea--"

"Just say it already!"

"The hair... It's. Jeb, it's a familial genetic match to someone we have on file."

"Who?"

"... You."

One word: that's all it took for the wool over Jebidiah's eyes to come clean off. Finally, what Carolina had said made a shred of sense, though the fact of the matter was something darker than Jeb could have possibly imagined.

Tana had to say nothing else for him to understand; in that moment, he knew exactly who was behind those deaths: the monster he had created.

---

Amelia was beginning to grow impatient. Brad was the one who'd been so overly cautious about this security guard patrolling the building, and yet he was willing to sit here at his drawing bench, scribbling mathematical equations over a piece of scrap paper, as if she didn't even exist.

It was getting into late evening, now, and she was tired--and still feeling quite ill from that machine.

"Man, what is taking you so long?" Amelia groaned at her brother as he scribbled more and more furiously. "I thought you said that you were just going to compare some notes?"

"It's a bit more complicated than that," was his answer, which came across a little too grumpily for Amelia's liking. "You wouldn't understand. Just go sit down or something, okay? I'll try and explain, when I'm done."

"Fine, fine," Amelia said with an eyeroll as she walked away, deciding to further investigate the fish swimming in the tank on the other side of the room. As she walked, though, the light-headedness came back--this time, with a level of nausea that left her stomach feeling as if it were turning in on itself.

"You alright?" Brad mumbled, though there didn't appear to be much actual concern in his voice.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," Amelia lied yet again, her hands fiercely clutching at her stomach.

No--she definitely wasn't fine. The next moment, her stomach did another sommersault; she was  becoming more and more convinced that her dinner was going to come crashing out onto the floor.

And yet, it was more than that--more than just her stomach. Or her head. Or her weak knees...

... It was every cell in her body. They weren't hot, but it felt as if she was on fire; turmoil seemed to bubble inside her from her feet to the crown of her head. The longer she crouched on her knees, preparing to retch all over the pristine white floor, the more even her fingernails seemed to rebel against any sensation that was normal.

'Your okay, Amelia, you're okay,' she tried to tell herself, the pounding sound of her heart in her chest overriding any other noises that may have been going on around her. 'Just focus on being okay.'

But she wasn't. It was is if the harder she fought, the worse it became. Even the very world she saw around her began to change--it was not unlike what she saw that night at the Bottega, except much more real. Real because it wasn't her surroundings that were changing: it was the way she saw them.

Amelia wheezed, her breath becoming more and more difficult the weaker she became. "What's... happening... to me..."

But, quicker than it began, it was over. The nausea stopped. The weakness stopped. The pounding of her heart... stopped.

Slowly, she began to arise.

"Amelia? Are you sure you're alright?" Brad paused in his writing, suddenly uneasy about the sudden noise, then silence, that had come from his sister. "We can leave, if you want--"

"No, Bradley. I'm quite alright."

"Are you almost finished?" she asked, now turning to face him. "There's something I wanted to ask you..."

"Yeah--oonnneeee sec," he mumbled, his tongue teasing the corner of his lip as he continued writing with increasing speed. "It's amazing, Amelia--amazing. I've never seen anything like this. These compounds that the scanner picked up in your bloodstream... They're remarkable. They have the same structure as a virus, and yet properties I've never seen before... But from my calculations, the effect they were having was regenerative, as if they were altering the very chemistry in your body--just... just remarkable!"

"That's... very interesting," Amelia said, slowly.

"Alright alright, sorry, I don't mean to bore you, I've just fascinated--this has to have something to do with these symptoms you've been having. I'll have to have a doctor come in and take a look. In the meantime--" Bradley gathered his notes up into a stack, and set them to the side of the workspace. "What is it that you wanted to ask me?"

"Oh my--oh my gawd, Amelia--what's... what's..." Bradley began to stumble backwards, sending his notes scattering to the floor. "You're... you're..." The words sputtered from his mouth irratically, as fear and uncertainty completely overtook him.

This... this couldn't be!

"I was just wondering..." Amelia hissed, now licking her lips. "... got anything to eat?!"

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